Pages

Friday, March 23, 2012

On Top of Spaghetti: Colored Spaghetti Sensory Bin

My imagination has really been running wild lately (even more than usual). On a typical day, mom finds herself trying to negotiate not only with me, but with my number one homie, Yoko Garcia (currently taking the form of a "moo cow"), Yoko's pet monkey (a fickle primate), Rosa (a top pirate "in my crew"), baby raccoon, baby bat, baby alligator, and baby moth (a recent addition "to my crew"). You might say her first mistake was trying to negotiate withe me, but since we're long past that, she now also has to deal with the rest of my crew. Yes, I really call them "my crew." One would think that if the Real Housewives series has taught mom anything, it's that you can't fight with crazy. But, she likes a good fight.

In any event, my imagination frequently needs some focus and mom has found making "sensory bins" to be a big help. I loved the colored rice/bug one and always enjoy water beads. There are some seriously elaborate sensory bins out there, and mom is quite tempted, but we're pretty sure daddy is going to put the kibosh on her paypal account any day now. So we've been trying not to get too crazy.

We followed this tutorial to make some colored spaghetti, but weren't thrilled with the colors. Maybe it was the gel food coloring, but mom had a hard time getting the color to spread evenly over the spaghetti. It still looked pretty cool. We used oceanish colors (blue, green, and purple) and then divided the pasta up between our two sensory bins. Then we added in our Toob boats (one of the several Toob kits we have and which mom keeps put away so they are a novelty when we get them out again), some kitchen goods, and went to town. Cami was not interested. And I was interested, but far more interested in the Toob boats than the spaghetti. I did play for a while and was excited when I got to use both bins of spaghetti -- I even made a spaghetti waterfall onto the floor! But I think one of the things I like best about sensory bins is the scooping, filling, and spilling. And that didn't work very well with the spaghetti.

So now we have two boxes of cooked, colored spaghetti in the fridge. Mom suggested a spaghetti fight outside. Any other ideas!?

3 comments:

I've read you can make spaghetti mobiles (as in hanging from the ceiling) by using glue to get the cooked noodles into a good shape. I don't really know how it works, but if I know anyone who could figure it out, it's you.